Power ball: Rookie Trumbo is Angels’ new-era slugger

June 30, 2011

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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Angels first baseman Mark Trumbo leads the team with 13 home runs, putting him on pace for 26 in his rookie season. Click on the photos to see the Top 5 home run seasons by Angels rookies.TEXT BY BILL PLUNKETT, PHOTO BY KEVIN SULLIVAN

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Tim Salmon hit 31 home runs as a rookie in 1993 and became the only Angel to be named the American League Rookie of the Year.

TEXT BY BILL PLUNKETT, FILE PHOTO

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Ken Hunt hit 25 home runs as a rookie with the expansion Angels playing their home games at LA's Wrigley Field during their inaugural season, 1961. He never hit more than six in a season again and finished his brief major-league career with a total of 33 home runs.

TEXT BY BILL PLUNKETT, FILE PHOTO

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Devon White hit 24 home runs as a rookie with the Angels in 1987. He didn't top 20 in a season again until 1998 with the Arizona Diamondbacks. He did finish his 17-year career with 208 home runs but was more known for his glove. He won seven Gold Glove awards as an outfielder.

TEXT BY BILL PLUNKETT, AP PHOTO

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The Angels had five players hit more than 20 home runs during their 1961 season at Wrigley Field and Hunt wasn't the only rookie in that group. Lee Thomas hit 24 in 1961 and topped that with 26 a year later when the Angels moved in to Dodger Stadium.

TEXT BY BILL PLUNKETT, FILE PHOTO

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Wally Joyner hit 22 home runs as a rookie in 1986 -- perhaps the most memorable rookie season in Angels history. Joyner still holds the club's rookie record with 100 RBI that year.

Angels first baseman Mark Trumbo leads the team with 13 home runs, putting him on pace for 26 in his rookie season. Click on the photos to see the Top 5 home run seasons by Angels rookies.TEXT BY BILL PLUNKETT, PHOTO BY KEVIN SULLIVAN

ANAHEIM - Each has his personal favorite.

Peter Bourjos recalls one drive Mark Trumbo hit at the San Francisco Giants' complex during the instructional league in Arizona when they first met in 2005 that made him say, "Man, who is this guy?"

But then there was the shot at Portland's Hadlock Field two years ago that seemed to be still rising as it struck the 37-foot high, faux-Fenway wall in left field.

"I swear the shortstop made a jump for it," Bourjos said. "It just kept climbing."

Conger remembers some long drives from Class-A Cedar Rapids in 2007. But the one that stands out for him was at Salt Lake's Spring Mobile Ballpark last season against the Sacramento Rivercats while Trumbo was on his way to leading the PCL (and tying for the minor league lead) with 36 home runs.

"There's the (left field) fence then there's a hill for kids to play on and then there are some trees," Conger said. "He cleared everything. They had to be — I might be exaggerating but I'm going to put a number out there. I want to say 520, 530 (feet)."

There are also stories of a long drive that cleared an ice cream shack marked with "462" beyond the left-field wall in one Triple-A park and another Trumbo hit in Iowa that Rich Thompson offers up — "That ball was pretty (spit) on."

Prodded for his own favorite, Trumbo reluctantly offers up a drive that sounds suspiciously like Conger's 500-footer in Salt Lake that he said "cleared pretty much everything there was to clear" short of the Wasatch Mountains.

"If there's one I can remember that's probably the one I would put up against all the others," Trumbo said. "It went over the tree-line. I don't know where it ended up. As far as feeling, that one probably felt the best."

RAW POWER

Angels manager Mike Scioscia definitely has been impressed with Trumbo's power, comparing him favorably to some of the best long-distance longball heroes of recent vintage.

"He's got as much raw power as anybody I've seen step into the batter's box, including guys like (Mike) Piazza, Vlad (Guerrero)," Scioscia said recently. "I saw (Jose) Canseco and (Mark) McGwire and they were obviously special guys. Trumbo is right there with them. He hits the ball hard as high and that keep going as far as anyone I've seen."

The comparisons are "very flattering," Trumbo said.

"Didn't McGwire hit 49 in his rookie year? I'm not in that class," he said. "It's flattering to hear that. But I'm my own player."

The comparisons are a little unsettling for reasons other than modesty. Three of the names Scioscia ticked off — Piazza, Canseco, McGwire — admitted to or are almost universally suspected of using steroids to enhance their power.

Trumbo, 25, is part of a generation of sluggers who grew up watching the moon shots and bloated home run totals of that era and now find themselves playing in a very different era, some of the air having been taken out of the longball by testing for performance-enhancing drugs.

"There are still guys like (Toronto's) Jose Bautista hitting a lot of home runs but, overall, they're on the decline," Trumbo said. "But I also think it was kind of cool to watch guys put up 50, 60, 70 home runs a year. The fact that they may or may not have done it in an ethical way? Yeah, that does bother me."

NEW ERA

Like Trumbo, Conger has a foot in two eras — one as a young fan and one as a major league player.

"I think one of the biggest things with all the drug testing — now when you do see it (power) and you see guys like Trum or Mike Stanton in Florida, you take in the whole equation of what's happened and it makes you appreciate it a little more," Conger said.

"I know I didn't play in that era so I can't really say. But growing up (in Huntington Beach), I was a big baseball fan and I followed the game. It's just different now."

When asked for his hitting role models, Trumbo does not list the inflated sluggers of that era such Canseco, McGwire or Barry Bonds. He lists players known more for their consistent run production and all-around offensive games than their home run power — Tim Salmon and Paul Konerko.

Midway through his rookie season, Trumbo leads the Angels with 13 home runs, sticking out like Gulliver among the Lilliputians on a team that hits home runs with less frequency (once every 45 at-bats) than all but four AL teams. He also has 35 RBIs, second on the team behind Torii Hunter (39). But he is batting just .213 with runners in scoring position and .239 overall while being prone to strikeouts (58 in 264 at-bats) as would be expected of a young power hitter.

But Scioscia praised Trumbo for the adjustments he has been able to make as a rookie, saying he has been more effective than Conger and Bourjos in that regard, making him a more consistent performer in the lineup.

"He's got a simple swing for a big guy," Scioscia said. "The holes that appear in his swing aren't a function of being a bad swing, they're just a function of being big. There are going to be some areas that you can't get to.

"His power isn't just show power. It's functional power. He's been able to bring it into games."

GETTING BETTER

Trumbo hopes to bring more in the second half, something he said he has been able to do at every level, with the emphasis on being a smarter, more selective hitter.

"I seem to get better as the season progresses, whatever level I've been at," he said. "Early on, I tend to swing a lot. I probably swing more than I take and I probably take my lumps for that. But as the season goes on, it seems like I get a better feel for that.

"It (being selective) is something that's been the weakest part of my game this year, there's no doubt about it. I'm getting better at it. But that's the biggest difference I've noticed between here and the minor leagues.

"Pitchers are just close enough consistently that you really have to be locked in to be able to take the right ones. Where down there (in the minors), there's lot more pitches you don't even have to give a second thought to swinging at.

"I feel I can handle a lot of pitches. But there's a difference between being able to handle them and being able to handle them with authority. I need to get better at taking the ones that I maybe can put in play but can't do a whole lot else with."

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